


Scopolia Carniolica

by Shulik



Category: Addams Family - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shulik/pseuds/Shulik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How did you know?" Wednesday asks her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scopolia Carniolica

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Starlingthefool](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlingthefool/gifts).



Wednesday has never heard the story of her parents met. 

 

+

The moon hangs heavy above the mansion, pregnant with a certain kind of glow that it only attains on the most particular of nights. Nights filled with magic, power heavy in the air and the smell of midnight blooming jasmine curling on one’s tongue. 

Her mother’s hair is darker than the sky and her hands, pale and steady hold the leatherbound Grimoire of the Nightshades lovingly. 

“One day, this will pass into your family-“ Morticia says with a small smile. She turns to the shelf above them, plucks several leafs from the belladonna plant standing withered and dry in a black pot framed with golden script. 

Grandmama doesn’t look away from the pot, doesn’t stop her muttering and slow stirring but she reaches out, palm open and gives a small nod when Morticia drops the leafs into her hand. 

The Grimoire passes through Nightshade generations, woman after woman of the bloodline that keep it safe- a sacred history of blood and spells, all woven together in beautiful calligraphy page after page. 

Wednesday feels her heart pause, her mother’s words touching on something that’s been on her mind. 

She’d electrocuted her brothers five times each, had gone alligator wrestling with her uncle and despite the fact that the family swamp is now quieter than ever, things both live and dead having gone to places not easily found, she still feels disturbed. Restless, like an itch beneath her skin that she can’t get at, can’t soothe, can’t cut it out no matter how hard she tries. 

Or her brother does. 

She had asked Pugsley to help but he had grown bored after three hours and had unchained her, shrugging in response to her fearsome scowl and wandered down to the basement where Grandmama had caught a mermaid last week. The mermaid had row after row of serrated teeth and mould-tinted skin, there were three concentric scars etched into her shoulder blade and Grandmama had said that it meant a warrior- those scars, a fierce killer, a hunter. 

Wednesday had never seen her brother look so happy. 

“How did you know about Father?” Wednesday stares at the table, keeps her hands steady and breathes calm. Even. 

Her grandmother’s stirring doesn’t stop but Wednesday can feel the weight of her ancient stare as she lifts her head, starts paying attention to her. It feels a little bit like being dissected, taken apart and scrutinized as closely as possible. 

Wednesday’s never been a fan of dissection, it requires too much patience for her. She has always been a fan of getting results as quickly as possible. 

“Whatever do you mean Wednesday?” Morticia inquires evenly. 

Her mother’s tone of voice, her grandmother’s stare- these are the women who have shaped Wednesday, who in turn have been shaped by their own blood, countless black clad figures stirring cauldrons with the very same Grimoire now cradled so lovingly in Morticia’s hands. 

“Did you know right away, when you met him? Did you know that you would marry him?” 

Wednesday can’t help the scorn dripping from her every word as she asks. Desperation for the truth does not equal to the weakness that comes from believing in such romantic nonsense. 

Morticia sets the Grimoire down as gently as she would with a newborn babe. 

Wednesday watches her mother’s long finger trace the lettering on the page, history seeped into both paper and skin and the magic of the night tastes like copper on her tongue. 

“He didn’t belong to me,” Morticia begins. She speaks distantly recalling the events of days long past with a light wistfulness, cobwebs being brushed from her every word as she brings them out, re-examines each of them and shows them to her daughter. “Your father, he wasn’t mine. Wasn’t meant to be mine, he was betrothed to your aunt Ophelia. Had been meant for her since they were children.” 

“Did he love her?”- Wednesday holds her breath. Her blood pulses blue beneath her skin, a false illusion of vulnerability, as if she only needs to press down to cut into her ether, into her very core. 

“He had never met her,” her mother says before pausing. She hums under her breath, a lilting melody that sizzles on Wednesday’s skin, fires her blood up and doubles her heart’s rhythm. 

“I was spending a year overseas, training under a renowned herbalist on the wild moors of Scotland,” there is a smile in her mother’s voice, “spending days wandering a wild forest, filled with dangerous beasts and filled with more magic than I had ever seen in France and my nights in a dark dungeon with a man who taught me more than anyone outside of the family ever had.” 

A peculiar warmth at this man’s mention, a fondness in her mother’s faint French accent and Wednesday chances a quick glance, watches the soft curl of Morticia’s red lips, the faraway look in her obsidian eyes. 

“And yes,” Morticia meets her gaze, a knowing certainty in the bemusement that stills Wednesday’s heart, “I would have fallen in love with this man, would have followed him to the very edge of his world, wearing a mask and swearing allegiance to whoever he needed me to. I would have withstood the most _delicious_ of pains for him, but _alas_ ,” a soft sigh, brows lowering in remembrance and the barely-present shiver in her mother’s delicate shoulders, “fate had other plans for us.” 

Wednesday looks away from her mother’s knowing, _female_ gaze. A small part of her doesn’t want to know this story, wants to continue being sure of her parents’ everlasting love for one another, a legend she had grown up hearing every night before bed, watching her father’s passion for her mother topple mountains and ruin financial empires. She wants her parents to have been meant for one another only, bound to no one else but …unfortunately, growing up- Wednesday has learned, often means learning the true stories behind the legends. 

She thinks of being tied at the wrists, vervain ropes cutting angry wounds into her skin and the silver of her collar edging from most delicate part of her throat, linked together into a corset that barely keeps her covered, the stiff breeze tightening her nipples as she lets herself be weak. 

There has only been one man that Wednesday had allowed the power over herself. She has never wanted anyone else. 

Wednesday may be her mother’s daughter, but she has her father’s heart. 

“What happened?” she hears herself asking, hands moving restlessly over the soft midnight velvet of her dress. 

“A funeral,” her mother says, “attended by a rival school. A school full of savages, a school that no outsider had ever had the privilege of seeing. The rumours were that it was set in the middle of an everlasting snowstorm in the Ural mountains, jealously guarded by wolves and ‘ _baba-yagas_ ’… One of their own, an expert in the Dark Arts had been visiting on an exchange of information. Nobody would ever know the true story but from what we had pierced together, the man had been found on the edge of the forest, throat torn out and his magic force missing. A small delegation had been formed to bring him home, gathered of men with dark magic in their souls and power free and fast at their fingertips. They had brought several students with them, upperclassmen wearing the fur of the animals they’d killed. 

I had been sitting under a silver and green banner, Maria Medici’s treatise on poisons in my lap when they’d walked in. A somber procession, filled with angry Cossacks and a headmaster drunk off his power- nobody special until I saw _him_. Everything about him I would learn later, how he had been banned from attending any of the schools on the continent, how Europe had shuddered when he had set foot on its soil and how curiously the crows would still whenever he’d venture into the forest, seeking my company with the flimsiest of excuses. No, none of that I knew right away. What I knew was that he was _captivating_ , I had seen more beautiful men but never again I would see one more graceful than Gomez, one that would move with such _danger_ in his every footstep. It was as if his every step announced his intentions, like a panther prowling towards his prey-“ Morticia’s voice goes breathy, high, dreamy “I was ensnared.” 

“Did you love him right away then?” Wednesday’s heart stills in her chest and the roaring in her ears ignites into a forest fire. 

Her mother’s smile is one of patient understanding, a wistfulness and pride that Wednesday feels ill equipped to handle, trapped on the precipice of girlhood and her future as a woman. 

“No. I did not love him right away, but I knew immediately that he fascinated me more than any other men I had ever known.”

The roaring dies and her heart, after a pause like it’s considered all of its options and realized that the safest and easiest way out is surrender, it begins beating in its regular rhythm. 

Wednesday relaxes the grip she’d had on the table, slowly peels finger after white-knuckled finger away from the wood and lets herself think again. 

“Was that what you wanted to hear?” her mother inquires softly and Wednesday looks up, spine straight; her hair in a heavy braid down her back, tall, strong, a Nightshade and meets her mother’s heavy lidded gaze. 

For all of her father’s bluster, the fire and passion running rampant in everything he does, it has always been Wednesday’s mother who has gently steered things along, an iron hand in a velvet glove, feminine power incarnate. 

Wednesday has never been more proud to be who she is. 

“Yes,” she says with a soft, secret smile and lets herself think of heavy chestnut curls and thick lenses the only barrier between the world and perfect understanding. 

Her grandmother is smiling at her, proud and misty eyed as the fumes of the potion rise steadily in wisps of smoke. 

“Grandmama,” Wednesday Addams says and lets herself be sure, “I will be bringing someone to dinner tomorrow. His name is Joel.”


End file.
